Twilight of the Sultanate c17.s1.1

c17.s1.1

From times immemorial, and because of its geographical peculiarities, India has been an agricultural country. Consequently, except for a small minority, its vast population has lived in the villages down to our own times. In the fourteenth-fifteenth century India, agriculture was the main occupation of the rural population. The vastness of land had made life easy and inexpensive. Rainfall in the country was abundant.¹ Artificial means of irrigation were not necessary, although they were not unknown.² But there was no safeguard against the vagaries of nature. Droughts brought about collapse in the peasant's economy as he depended almost entirely on nature and its seasonal cycle. The vagaries of nature, on the one hand, made him a worshipper of "gods" of nature like the sun, the clouds, the rain, etc. and, on the other hand, a fatalist.